Woo! Finally a new story. I'm so busy with work that I can't find time to write, and I've been in such a funk that I can't do anything. But I feel really good today, so I decided I'm positing a story that I've been working on for a few years. I don't know if I should mention a trigger warning for minor violence since I've never before, but there is mention of rape, so... yeah?
Leave a review telling what you think!
Jade
When I was ten, I caught my father in bed with another woman.
I remember running into the kitchen to call my mother; I didn't know what else to do at the time. He was kissing that woman, and I believe remember thinking 'he shouldn't do that; that lady isn't my mom.'
At first, my mother didn't believe me. 'He wouldn't do that.' And then she was quiet; she was so quiet, I wondered if she'd hung up. She told me she would be home soon, and fifteen minutes later, she was.
I remember her running after my father and the other woman with a knife, screaming about that woman being a whore. He wasn't going to leave her with a kid; he was going to take care of his family. How dare he defile their bed with that cokehead hooker?
That night, I watched my mother murder my father and a prostitute.
She was sent to jail, and I was sent to LA. I wasn't allowed to see her for a while or go to her trial, but I'll never forget the first time I visited her in prison. I needed to know why she did it, why a woman who was always so kind and caring would kill two people without a second thought.
"All men do is hurt women, Emmy," she'd said through the prison phone, a dark glare in her eyes. There was a certain wildness in them that still plagues me in my sleep. "They hurt us with sex, but we like it; they make us think that it'll stop hurting one day, but it never will. And you know why?"
Her gaze was penetrating, frightening. I couldn't even bring myself to look at her anymore. "No…"
"Because we're supposed to save ourselves for marriage. That is the only way it won't hurt; I didn't wait, so it hurt for me. It kept hurting and hurting, to the point where I lost hope that it wouldn't hurt anymore, so I stopped. And because I stopped, your father found a whore."
Suddenly, she shot up from her chair and banged her receiver on the thick glass. I ducked beneath the table with a scream, and it was the second time in my life that I'd ever been truly terrified. She shouted profanities that I could barely hear, and a guard had to drag her away.
It was the first and last time I saw her in prison.
Her words stuck with me, though, and I told myself that I'd wait until I got married.
After the night my father died, I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle on my mother's side. I refused to let anyone know, but I was so goddamn excited about it; I loved my uncle more than anything. He was everything I could have asked for in a father: he was kind, charitable, and an adventure-seeker.
He was involved in some program that let him travel a lot, so he was always going to foreign countries to build schools and churches, or to do some other saint shit. And whenever he went somewhere, he'd bring me back a cool souvenir.
When I was fifteen, he died somewhere in Australia while trying to protect endangered wildlife.
Most of the night was hazy, but I remember the important things. Aunt Clara had collapsed when she got the news, clinging to her phone as she sobbed on the floor. I sat with her in the kitchen for hours until she was finally able to tell me what happened through breathless shudders.
I was so fucking angry that the one good thing I had in my life had been taken away from me, that I couldn't have someone who would love me unconditionally and never leave me. My father was dead, not like he gave a damn about me when his body was still warm, and my mother was batshit. Sure, Clara was nice and loved me, can but she was blood; Uncle Jacob wasn't, but he loved me as if I was his own child.
So in my anger, I took a walk.
I couldn't stand to be in that house, with that wailing woman. She claimed she loved Uncle Jacob, but she never acted like she missed him anytime he would go away; she was always out late with her friends. Meanwhile, I'd sulk in my room while the babysitter ran up the cable bill.
Who did she think she was, crying on the kitchen floor for a man she didn't truly care about?
I had my father's lucky switchblade-it was the only gift he'd ever given me-so I wasn't scared to walk by myself. And even if I was apprehensive about walking around LA at night, I was too damn furious to care.
I'd been so lost in my thoughts, I didn't hear this creep come up behind me. Before I could snatch the switchblade, his hands were around my mouth and waist, and he was pulling me into a rundown building. I tried fighting him off, tried to squirm from his grasp, but everything moved in such a blur.
He was on top of me, his clammy hands pulling at my clothes. His sweaty lips were hot on my skin, and the pain I felt as he took my virginity was almost too much to bear. No matter how much I tried to get him off, he was so much bigger than me and nearly crushed me. If not for his hand clamped on my mouth to muffle my screams, my cries might have been bloodcurdling.
It didn't take long for the scum to finish, but it felt like hours while it happened.
Once he was done, he looked around the rundown space-probably looking for something to finish me off with. Taking advantage of the moment, I managed to grab my switchblade from my coat pocket and ram it into his neck.
He grunted loudly and slapped his hand over it as if it were a bug bite, but I quickly yanked it from his skin, blood spurting all over my bare chest.
He muttered something to me, but it was nearly inaudible.
As he fell to the ground, I gathered up the ripped remains of my clothes and put them on, uncaring of what I looked like.
The switchblade out at the ready and clutched tightly in hand, I ran as fast as I could back home.
I couldn't tell Clara what happened; as angry as I was, it would only be worse on her. And what would telling her have done? I was eleven and wouldn't get my period for another year and a half-even though I didn't know that at the time-so I couldn't get gotten pregnant. What was the point of reliving that if there was nothing she could do about it?
So instead, I holed myself away in my room and replayed my mother's words from four years ago.
"We're supposed to save ourselves for marriage. That is the only way it won't hurt."
Goddamn that stupid fucker.
He took away my choice, and because he took away my choice, I would never be able to enjoy sex; it was always going to hurt. From the romantic movies I used to watch with my mother, women that had sex enjoyed it, and now I never would.
And as I lay on my bed, a thought occurred to me: a lot of women didn't wait until marriage to lose their virginity. I knew the women in movies weren't real, but I had a cousin who got pregnant at twenty and wasn't married; she was very promiscuous, and it finally caught up to her.
That prostitute probably wasn't married; what man would actually let their wife do that kind of stuff? And like my mother said, women that didn't wait kept having sex anyway.
So what if those women liked the pain? What if they weren't like my mother and didn't hope it would stop hurting?
It made sense.
As the thought rolled around in my brain, I slowly came to grips with the fact that I no longer had a choice of whether or not I waited until marriage.
So like my cousin, I slept around.
Like my mother said, sex still hurt, but I liked the pain.
At first, I slept with older boys. It was a little difficult to seduce someone when you don't know what the word means and you don't have any tits, but it got easier after I hit puberty.
I was always careful, and I gained a lot of notches in my belt. As I kept doing it, it didn't hurt as much; I didn't mean to, but I would picture my uncle instead of some zit-faced high school boy.
The first time that happened, I realized I was a masochist.
I was in the back of Jamie Mulroney's parents' van when I randomly thought of Jacob. He was saying how much he loved me, how much he missed me when he would go away. I could hear his words as clear as day, and it became his hands clumsily fumbling over my thirteen-year-old body. His lips were on mine instead of Jamie's, and sex didn't hurt as bad.
No matter what I did, no matter who I slept with, it was always Jacob in their place.
But I needed the pain; I needed to be reminded of what I'd done.
Even though some dude I probably killed in a run down house had taken my virginity, it was ultimately my fault it had happened. If I hadn't gone for that walk, if I had have fought a little harder, I'd still have that choice; I'd still have the chance to not end up like my mother.
So the sex got rougher.
I did whatever I could to make it hurt more.
When I'm with a guy, I want him to fuck me so hard that all I can do is scream or dig my nails into his back. I just want him to thrust inside of me until he splits me in half.
I met Beck-a boy who looked so much like my uncle that I could hardly stand to be around him-my freshman year of high school. I just wanted to screw him and never talk to him again, but he wouldn't let me. He actually pursued me, and eventually won me over.
But our first time together, sex didn't hurt at all.
I assumed it was in part due to the clumsiness of it being his first time, but I didn't like it.
So I told him what I wanted in bed, and now he knows how to fuck me until I can barely walk the next morning.
